Feathers
by Scarabbug
Summary: He had no idea how he’d gotten here or why his head was buzzing the way it was. So he really didn’t understand why the first thing they wanted to talk to him about was their names. Haibane Renmei inspired. May contain some spoilers.


**This was inspired heavily from the anime series '_Haibane Renmei'_, though I hope for it to be understandable to people who have not seen that series. contains SPOILERS for most of the recent DCU, specifically _Flash: Fastest Man Alive #13_. But these are only spoilers by association, so… yeah. **

**Title subject to change (will take suggestons). **

* * *

"_Perhaps this is what it means to be bound by sin. To spin in the same circle, looking for where the sin lies, and at some point losing sight of the way out_." – Washi, Haibane Renmei.

_"End of the day, you only need to know two things about me. I run fast, and I help people."_

Feathers. 

_He started running the second he got there. Wherever "there" was, exactly, anyway. _

_It was dark out here. Not night-time dark (because that had stars, right?) or sleep time dark but this strange sort of twilight-but-not. He couldn't see the sun setting anywhere in the distance or any red light peeking through the otherwise blackened sky, and yet despite all this, the sky didn't seem that black at all. _

_It was a little scary, really, mostly because he just couldn't seem to run away from it, no matter how he tried. _

_And he did try to, for a while. It was cold out here, and kind of spooky, and he wanted out of the darkness. So as soon as he found himself standing in grassland in the middle of the not-night-darkness, he sought out the horizon (just a think grey line, somewhere in the distance) and started running towards it as fast as he could. Which, for the record, was pretty damn fast. _

_It wasn't long before he realised that he was running up a hill. The grass was high all around him, almost as high as his head, and he could make out every last little strand of it, even though he knew he was going so fast everything should have blurred beyond recognition if he tried to focus on them. _

_He kept on running. _

_It was nice of the funny red person who showed up to try and help him out like that, (at least, he thinks it's trying to help him, running alongside him and trying to give him the occasional shove) but it didn't seem to be doing much good. Which sucked, 'cause the red person seemed to be trying really, really hard to speed him up so he could get to the top of the hill. It was fast, and sharp and the air seemed to prickle of he ran close enough besides it, always making him sure it was there. _

_In the end, though, he just shook his head, and was surprised that he didn't sound (or feel) the least bit out of breath, as he spoke: _

_'Nah, its okay. I guess you can't do anything and I'm faster'n you are anyway.' _

_The figure hung around for a few moments (or minutes or hours or.. .whatever, longer before it slowly began fading into the dirt. He had the strangest feeling he'd… upset it, somehow). '…Thanks for trying, and all…' _

_He didn't stop running when the red-thing disappeared, but he did slow down a bit. He figured it didn't really matter how fast he was going since the top of the hill never seemed to get any closer anyway. The problem was that when he slowed down, it suddenly seemed so much further away which was weird and confusing and really irritating. Maybe getting there wasn't so important. Maybe the important thing was just to run, but that didn't change the fact that he was curious. He wanted to know what he was running into. He wanted to know where the red-thing had pushed him. _

_'So… so now what am I supposed to do?' He asked himself, nervously. And almost as soon as he did so, a small, barely noticeable voice inside of his head told him the answer _

_Run faster. _

_So he did. _

_And the red-person was good enough to reappear just to give him one last shove before he vanished into the rising grass. _

* * *

Only a few moments into his first attempt at waking up when the noisy voices around him seemed to be trying to tell him to, the boy made a discovery: Waking up was a whole lot _hard_erthan he thought it was going to be.

'Is he _still_ asleep?' There was a shuffling noise and then a pause, like somebody moving closer to him. The voice sounded like it belonged to a boy. It was kind of impatient, too, as if it had been waiting forever. 'Oh… Yeah.

Another voice coughed slightly, its owner sounding kind of impatient themselves. That voice was different to the first: more lilting. Female, he figured. Or maybe a really funny sounding guy. 'Well, as you just had to confirm for yourself –he's _still_ asleep, now shut _up_.'

'You're kidding me, right?'

She _wasn't_ kidding. Or at least, he didn't _think_ she was. He was fairly sure he still _looked_ like he was asleep even if he really wasn't. He wanted to pretend for a little while longer so he could focus on getting his bearings and remembering…

…Remembering _something_.

'Seriously, there's no way anyone can sleep this long.' That voice was the boy's again. It's sounded bit annoyed, but he didn't really care that much.

'Hah, says you. It took you, what? Forty-eight hours.'

'Oh, it so did _not_ take that long…'

Impatience. Then annoyance. And now sarcasm. Their tone of discussion sounded youthful and relaxed even though they were almost arguing. _Adolescent_. Something seemed to transmit that word to his mind directly, as if he'd read it somewhere someplace but couldn't quite remember where.

'Uhuh. _Right_. I was _there_ at the time, remember? The first thing you said to me was an extremely muffled "_whassup babe_"?'

'Heh, and you've liked me ever since right? But seriously, he's been out for what? Way longer than forty-eight. Nobody can sleep that much, unless…'

'Ugh. Don't even _say it_. I don't want to think about the possibility of this being another nightmare case. It was bad enough he had to… to hatch all alone in a dark, dirty storage closet.' There was a pause, a ruffle, somewhere. 'I can't believe none of you thought to check all the buildings last night!'

Storage closet?

That was weird. He didn't _remember_ any storage closet. And he didn't remember any darkness and dirt, either. All he could remember was a strange, red blur and a hill that never seemed to end.

Stupid hill.

Stupid dream.

Stupid…

…Where _was_ he now, anyway?

It didn't feel like a cold dark storage closet, that was for sure. It felt warm and soft and comfortable. But the comfort was getting harder to notice, now, because everything kind of _ached _a bit. Maybe he'd pulled something running up that hill…

But if the hill was a dream, then…

Oh. Wait, hold on…

It was mostly shock that made him open his eyes.

'Uh… Steph?'

'What is it now, Kon, I said don't… oh.'

Someone shifted nearby and he heard something wooden screeching against a stony floor, the movement fast and anxious. Something felt as if it were… flitting (was that even a real word? It wasn't in the dictionary was it? No, it wasn't, but it _sounded_ like the right word, anyway so he decided he'd just go with "flitting") over him, almost scared to touch. 'Um… H-hey there. You alright?'

He didn't try to answer her, at first. He honestly had no desire to. He just lay there and blinked a bit (or half blinked, because his eyelids didn't really seem to want to do what he told them), trying to focus. This just didn't seem to work. The image in front of him remained a strange, fuzzy yellow-grey colour no matter how many times he half-blinked at it, but he knew, at least, that it had to be a girl. A girl's face and half-hearted smile. And then another one –darker and paler all in one and without any smile at all. 'Whoa… hey, Kon, check it out.'

'What? Oh… wow. _Gold_. Freaky, man…'

He focused a bit more.

The darker face was closer now. A _lot_ closer, and as he screwed his eyes resolutely up in one last, hard-as-possible blink, the image finally seemed to clear up. It was a boy alright, small ears, square jaw, and a grin wide enough to split his cheeks.

He was also upside down. Hanging directly overhead, suspended, apparently, from nothing but thin air. 'Hey there, welcome back to the world of the living! Sorta!'

…_Not_ the easiest thing to wake up to.

So it was really no wonder, then, that the boy should suddenly yelp in surprise, bolt up into a sitting position, and (definitely accidentally) elbow the grinning one right in the jaw.

* * *

'See me?' the tall boy (who looked a lot more muscular and strong than the other two who had appeared in the room since the blonde girl left and returned with yet more smiling people, all roughly the same age and build. This was probably why he still wasn't too bothered about the fact that he'd just been struck in the jaw by somebody's elbow) jabbed a thumb at himself. The boy refrained from commenting on the fact that the other was really pretty hard to _miss_. 'I'm Kon.'

The boy gripped the glass of water the blonde girl had given him a little too tightly in his fingers. This name business was a really weird affair. He'd just woken up in a strange room, in a strange (albeit very safe feeling) bed with even stranger people (which he'd get to explaining to himself in a moment). He had no idea how he'd gotten here or why his head was _buzzing_ the way it was.

So he really didn't understand why the first thing they wanted to talk to him about was their _names_.

Okay – so asking someone their name when you met them (he realised he was only slightly unnerved by the fact that he didn't seem to _remember_ his own) was a pretty normal thing to do. But telling them what their name _meant_ and that they _got_ that name from a dream was just a little bit weirder.

The wings were strange, too. As of yet, the tall boy (Kon, right?) was the only one he's seen to ever be not touching the ground at some point and was using some semblance of flying but then, that was really no surprise. The wings they had were all small, dull, actually kind of _withered_ and not-much-good-for-anything-looking. It even took him a couple of guesses to work out they were supposed to be _wings_ at all (and the quiet brown haired boy sitting closest to the bed had to give him a clue first – and also inform him that yes –they were real and not just attached to their backs with tape or glue).

He didn't see the point of them, but it seemed they were there anyway and… they weren't exactly _in the way_, or anything. They must have cut holes for them in their clothes, or something.

Other than that, these people looked mostly normal. Except for the rings of light around their heads. They're the most distracting thing. He had no idea how they were staying up there, as some strange rule of logic was telling him they really shouldn't be able to, and yet they did.

And that was just _freaky. _Heck, he wasn't even sure what was real and what wasn't, right now, so you'd have thought knowing "freaky" when he saw it would've been a bit beyond him, but it wasn't. They had wings. They had rings of light hovering against the backs of their skulls. Other than that they all seemed like reasonably normal looking people (excepting that one of them hovered instead of walked around). Two girls and three boys. One girl – the one he'd earlier mistaken for some kind of strange yellow-grey blob)

The other girl had slightly darker hair, hovering between blonde and brown – again, normal. Nothing weird at all.

'…Kon?'

'Yeah,' the hovering boy (though he wasn't actually hovering now, so much as drifting at the end of the bed) 'What, you've never seen a God before?'

The boy rubbed the back of his head uncertainly. '…So… Kon means God?'

'No, it doesn't,' the other boy (the thinner, brown haired one with the rather blank eyes) said, simply. He seemed to be casting an impatient look at the taller boy but his vision was a bit blurry still so it was kind of hard to tell. 'Your name means _laminator_, Kon. You dreamt that you were making sticking together multiple plies of paper. A la printing press.'

The taller boy snorted dismissively. 'Yeah, with my bare hands, man! I betcha none of you did _that_.'

'Kon, stop it, you're embarrassing yourself.'

'And you're confusing the new kid,' the other dark haired boy with the strange eyes (wide, dark and rather ringed) added, wringing his hands a bit, irritably. 'S'never good to confuse em too soon. They get really clingy later on.'

The first person (blonde blob girl) shuddered a little. 'Well _you're_ a bundle of joy today, aren't ya, Slo? And you know technically, Timothy _talked_ to a God in _his_ dream so he's a whole lot closer than someone who happens to be very loosely connected.'

The boy blinked his eyes (which his new "friend" Kon had kindly told him were a "really freaky" yellow colour. He wasn't sure why it had been necessary for him to know this so soon after he'd woken up, but "Kon" seemed to have a lot of useless observations handy) 'Wow, you talked to a God?'

'Not as cool as it sounds.' The boy called Timothy said, blankly.

'It wasn't a very nice dream,' the other girl, (she had said her name was Greta, right? Because she'd been taking pearls from oysters in her dream, and Greta meant _pearl… _which sounded like a stupid dream to him, but maybe dreams weren't _supposed_ to make sense anyway) leaned over to whisper in his ear, as if that was some kind of really big secret. 'The god was large and dark and stuff. Timothy still has the dream sometimes, even now, and that's always a bad sign.'

'Thank you, Greta, I don't think he really needs that observation do you?' Timothy sounded a little but cold and Greta shuffled on her feet and gave their newcomer a nervous smile.

'Oh…' The whole conversation remained lost on him.

'So anyway, you get the drift,' the taller blonde girl waved a hand. 'Timothy – favourite of God. Greta – Pearl, Stephanie –Crown, Kon –Paper Presser…'

'Hey!'

'…So the name you get is based on the dream,' the blob girl –who was apparently called Steph – continued, completely ignoring Kon's annoyance. 'If you can remember it, that is… and you _do_, right? Which is good.'

'Uh… yeah.' He really didn't get a word of this. Truth be told, he was starting to wonder if it _mattered_. He tried to think about the Dream he'd just told them about, but just remembering the hill made him want to start running again _right_ now, as fast and as far as he possibly could. Maybe he was scared, but he couldn't be sure. His feelings were all a little bit muffled.

'And in that dream,' Steph went on, 'you said that you were _running_. Right?'

'Yeah,' the boy nodded rapidly, feeling glad that this, at least, was something he could be sure about. 'Up a hill, only I couldn't get to the top of it no matter how fast I ran… It was a really steep hill,' he added after a moment's of pause revealed no change in his observers' expressions.

'Oh…' the girl called Greta mumbled. 'Well that's… that's easy enough I suppose.'

'It _is_ easy,' Timothy said, leaning backwards in the chair he was sitting in. He kept the finger of his left hand pressed against the bridge of his nose. Somehow it seems as if he always does that when he thinks.

The boy took advantage of the silence in order to look around a bit. There was nothing that special about the room. The floor was wood, and the walls were probably made of plaster or something. The window was up too high for him to see out of it. To the right was a door, to the left was a table and that was pretty much everything. He wasn't sure how he could remember the names of all these simple things – plaster, wood, too-high-windows, but couldn't remember anything about where he'd been before this room and the dream.

Then, after what seems like hours. '…Bartholomew,' Tim said.

'Bar-whatnot?' Kon seemed to frown. The boy, for his part, simply blinked in confused.

'Uh… what?'

'Bartholomew. Your name,' Tim repeated, with slightly more emphasis than was probably necessary. The firm stillness in his dark, blue eyes made him –Bartholomew– feel a little dumb. 'It means "furrow". Or hill', I believe. I can't actually think of anything related to running. This is the close as I can get.'

Kon sniggered and… he was doing that weird floating thing again, legs folded at the end of the bed in a pose that could only be described as regally laid-back. Now the bo—Bartholomew was sure he hadn't been imagining it before. This guy really _could_ fly. 'Wow, get that –there's actually something that the great Timothy _doesn't_ know.'

'There is, isn't there?' Timothy says, dryly. 'Well? What do you think of it?'

When the boy looked up after a moment's pause that felt a lot longer than it probably was, he saw that everyone seemed to be waiting for his answer. Greta had her hands clasped and a smile on her face. 'So… Bartholomew?' he mumbled, trying to make the name feel right. He ran it through in his head a few times. He didn't _feel_ like a Bartholomew. Then again, he supposed he didn't feel like much at all. He knew what he remembered- what he remembered was the dream, and running, and lots of words which felt long and complicated, but he didn't know where any of that had came from. Which was annoying more than anything. Not to mention frightening.

And now his head was _buzzing_ again.

Who was he before Bartholomew, anyway?

'I like it,' Greta smiled the kind of smile that reminded him of Steph, only softer. 'He looks like a Bartholomew to me, it sounds good.'

'Kinda a mouthful, though,' Kon muttered, but the bo— Bartholomew only half heard him. His head really _hurt_, and he didn't want to think about names right now. He also, he noticed only vaguely, suddenly felt very much like a dead weight.

He must've looked it too, because Greta noticed and started tapping Timothy rapidly on the arm.

Bartholomew, for his part, didn't even realise he was doubling over in pain until he recognized the feeling of Tim's hands against his bare shoulders.

Bartholomew. They were calling him Bartholomew already? He's only had the name for going on two seconds so…

So why did that feel like such a long time?

Tim was talking again. Not to him, though. 'He slept longer than most did, didn't he? And he'd already hatched when you found him?'

'Well… yeah.' He heard something whistling and figured it had to be Kon. It felt too _close_ to be anyone else. 'So… Already? Aw, man, he's gonna get this _bad_, isn't he?'

Timothy seems to suck in a breath. 'Oh, _wonderful_. Have _any_ of you explained things him yet?'

Stephanie spoke up. 'Explained?! We've only had _half an hour_, here, he's only just got a _name_, he—!' She cut off, and Bartholomew (Bartholomew… no matter how many times he thought it, he simply couldn't get _used_ to that name) thought he saw her biting her lip. 'Tim, there wasn't enough _time_.'

_Time for what?_ Bartholomew wondered. He could probably do a thing or two about that. Things seem to be going so slowly for him right now. Everything moving in slow motion. Even the _pain_.

'…No, It's alright. I'll explain things. The rest of you should get out of here.'

Nobody argued. Maybe they never did.

Everything was hard and dry and much too warm, and his head hurt even worse than before, the pain travelling down his neck and tensing around his shoulders.

'It's alright. It won't hurt forever.' Bartholomew felt Tim turn away from him for a moment and his tone changed when he glanced at the door or one of the other boys or… _something_. Like it really mattered. 'Go on, Steph; get the others _out_ of here. Especially those kids staring in around the hallway, it won't do them any good if they hear.'

_Hear what_? Bart thought and he wanted to ask this question out loud but when he opened his mouth to talk the words that actually came out were: 'My head…'

'It's not your head,' Tim said gently, and that softness seemed a little… weird, because even though he'd only known him for a little while, Tim just didn't feel like a _gentle_ kind of person –even the hands holding onto his shoulders are more firm than gentle. More _defensive_ than protective. It felt like something of a very uncommon moment. 'Or at least it _won't_ be, in a few moments. It's alright, though, I'm right here.'

'He's not lying you know. Seriously, we've been putting up with him for years.'

'Zip it, Kon, the new kid's in pain here.'

'I _know_ that! I'm _trying_ to provide a distraction.'

'Haven't ya learned now kid? Your distractions just don't fragging well work!'

…Frag?

That wasn't a real word _either_, was it?

'…Ow.' Actually, who _cared_ if it was or not?

'Worked well enough on you, didn't they? You were so busy tryin' to claw my eyes out you didn't even notice how much it hurt.'

'Oh, ha-fragging-ha. Can we get out and give them some quiet already?'

'Yeah, Kon you're enough to give anyone a headache whether they have wings growin' in or not.'

Wings growing…

…In?

Oh. Oh, _crap_.

(Now _that_ was a word! He knew that much).

Bartholomew felt his whole body tensing up in a way which had nothing whatsoever to do with the pain and everything to do with the fact that he was _terrified_. Because he didn't _want_ these strange, half feathered things growing out of him like they _belonged_ there. He didn't want this to hurt anymore.

'You hear that, Bart?' Kon's tone of voice was almost a laugh and broke through the pain like an aspirin. 'Welcome to your new life. Slo's always like this; the important thing is to make sure that _you_ drive him crazy before he has a chance to do it to you.'

'_Kon_.'

'Right. _Right_. Gotcha Tim, leaving now.'

_Kon. _

Bart decided, briefly in the few moments he had before the pain started making it far too difficult to think, that he really liked Kon. He liked the way he smiled and laughed and tried to pretend that things were okay when Bartholomew really knew they weren't.

The twinge was spreading downwards, now, and growing stronger and he started to see what Timothy had meant –because the pain really _wasn't_ in his head. It was in his shoulders and collarbone and… and just about _everywhere_. Breathing deeply wasn't helping. In fact, he thought it was making things worse. Like extra bones were forming beneath his skin and ripping through the tissue that's already there, '_so they can feed off the air in his lungs_' and he has no _idea_ where those words came from and…

And he wanted to _run_ again. He didn't know _why_ but he did, and it _hurt_ so badly that it felt as if Tim's hands were the only thing really holding him still. The touch seemed to say Tim wouldn't let go, and Bartholomew tried his hardest to believe it.

'Frag, I always _hate_ this part…'

'Yeah. I think… yeah, Timmy-boy's right, we should get out and move those kids. Don't wanna scare em… clingy.'

'Yeah I… Tim?'

'Alright, Steph, just go. I'll stay here. Kon?'

'Uh. Message received loud and clear, exiting now.'

Bartholomew –is that really his name now, he thinks, muzzily (also not a word, or so the dictionary in his head tells him… what's the deal with that, anyway?)– heard the exchange between them but didn't really _hear_ it. His head was too muzzy (real or not, it was a good word) to really understand.

What he _did_ hear was Timothy –Timothy _apologising_. 'Should've explained this to you right away. I left Kon with you, probably not a good move but Steph…' his voice trailed off. There was sharp movement but Bartholomew didn't look to see what was causing it. Then Tim was right next to him again and holding out something in front of his face. It took Bartholomew a couple of seconds to realise it was actually Tim's hand. Tim's thumb, wrapped up in some kind of thick bandage.

'Bite down.' Tim said.

It sounded almost like an _order_, so Bartholomew did, without stopping to think that it was probably going to really _hurt_ Tim. He felt Tim flinch but he didn't pull away, not even when the pain got worse and Bartholomew bit down even harder.

Really, _really_ wanted to run. Couldn't. Could hardly even _breathe_.

He could feel something new around the pain and tearing. It's almost like a tickling –the tickling of feathers, he realises, with an acknowledgement that made him want to screw up his eyes and scream some more. He doesn't, though, if only because he doesn't want to sound stupid in front of Tim.

He wouldn't scream, though, no matter how much it hurt him. He wouldn't. He _wouldn't_.

* * *

**Reviews and concrit appreciated.**


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